Like Tibet much of the ethnic violence in recent years has been a result both of Beijing’s continuing hard-line approach towards ‘splitist’ tendencies and Uyghur opposition to the officially sanctioned, and indeed supported, migration of Han Chinese into the region. The latter is the result of the ‘Go West’, or ‘Chinese Western Development’ program that was launched by then-Premier Zhu Rhongji in 2000 in order to alleviate the growing economic division between the eastern maritime board and the rest of the country …. Massive infrastructure projects including highways and rail lines were largely designed according to Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights to “bind Xinjiang more closely to the rest of the PRC.” While the Chinese government denies that its policies are designed to promote demographic change the proportion of Xinjiang’s population that is Han Chinese has risen from approximately 5 per cent in the 1940s to around 40 per cent today.

… For the Uyghurs the continued inflow of ethnic Han Chinese threatens their distinct ethnic, linguistic and cultural identity and threatens to make them eventually a minority in the region as a whole.

Units of the People’s Armed Police, some in riot suppression gear, stood in clumps at points throughout Kashgar, a Silk Road city of 600,000 people, about 80 percent of whom are members of Xinjiang’s native Turkic Muslim Uighur ethnic group.

Armored cars were parked along streets and a nighttime curfew was in force downtown, with people only allowed to cross the security cordon to leave for the suburbs ….

Pools of dried blood were visible Tuesday on the floor of the destroyed restaurant, its windows were shattered and its walls charred by fire.